Running South America

Snow Carretera Austral, southern Chile.

Katharine and David Lowrie are the first people in the world to have run the length of South America unsupported. They ran 6,504 miles, through five countries, averaging 20 miles a day, often running marathons back-to-back, in temperatures ranging from sub-zero to 45 degrees Celsius.

They learnt how to run barefoot with the help of a VIVOcoach and VIVOshoes.

Grand Sabana, Venezuela.

Katharine recently published,'Running South America with my Husband and other animals', which chronicles the crazy feat and she'll be talking about it and selling/signing books at the NEW Vivobarefoot London concept store, Neal Street, this Wednesday 15th November between 1700-1900.

Here we have an exclusive extract from her book...

Like no other form of passage, running would allow us to penetrate the moods of the land and its creatures. With only a couple of millimetres of ‘barefoot’ shoe-soles separating us from the earth’s heartbeat, often only our unshod skin, we would move silently, stealthily, creeping up on wildlife, a whisper away from discovery, a step from the unknown and unexpected.

I loved the idea (of running South America). I love everything about the exhilaration of running: my heart pounding, the warmth spreading through my chest, my arms pulling me forward, my legs straining, my feet instinctively feeling their way, my head willing me on; my body purring with fitness. I feel naked, stripped of kit, reality, concerns, barely conscious of the drip, drip, dripping - a way of stresses and anxieties. No wonder: it’s what our bodies were made for, after millennia of evolution, when we stepped down from the trees and began pounding the sun-baked plains of Africa, relentlessly pursing our prey.

Remote Bolivia.

But for me the crucial piece of the running jigsaw is running wild; running with wildlife and wilderness, sensing the raw, natural elements within and without myself like never before, as my body and being tingle with life and vigour.

Look after your kit and it will look after you!We spoke to wilderness and survival expert Ben McNutt on how to look after your leather hiking boots so they provide the best innate water-resistance nature has to offer (and all other leather goods for that matter!).

Cold water swimming is fast emerging on the medical radar as the ‘super food’ of physical activities – lowering blood pressure, boosting immunity, circulation and libido, and even mediating stress and depression.
But what the colder months?
We asked some cold-water lovers of the Swimrun World Series why and how they do it when the temperature starts to plummet…